


Smooth, Barton

by ashes0909



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, No Farm Animals were Harmed, There's A Goat in This One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 15:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13661466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashes0909/pseuds/ashes0909
Summary: Clint knew the Winter Soldier could make the shot from their range.But that wasn’t what happened.





	Smooth, Barton

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FestiveFerret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FestiveFerret/gifts).



It was hot. The desert sun beat down on Clint through the layers of camouflage he wore, and he shifted on the cement rooftop, gripping his bow tighter. He wasn’t alone on the rooftop, not anymore, now that the Winter Soldier -- Bucky, he was supposed to call him -- was here. But it was hard to call the person he admired and mimicked, that was scary as shit and deadly as hell, _Bucky_.

Calling him Barnes worked well enough to calm Steve’s clenched jaw in times of need, so he went with that around the tower. But the Winter Soldier was still a dark, silent, cold presence by his side and that was enough like winter for Clint to keep referring to him as that in his head.

They were on a mission in a small desert town in Oman, and everything was bright and dusty. He pulled his hat down further on his head, and straightened his sunglasses. The Winter Soldier didn’t move an inch, never fidgeted or twitched. It made Clint antsy, and apparently unfocused too, because he was a second behind the Soldier to notice the goat walking down the middle of the street. And it took him another second to realize it was more than any ordinary goat.

“Is that…?” Clint couldn’t believe his eyes, just when he thought the evil organization they were searching for couldn’t get any worse, they strapped explosives onto a farm animal.

Next, to him the Winter Soldier cursed and lifted his gun. Clint’s breath caught, he waited for the inevitable, for him to take down the goat and stop the explosives from entering further into the town. It made sense, efficient, and he knew the Winter Soldier could make the shot from their range.

But that wasn’t what happened.

He didn’t shoot the goat.

He was completely thrown when the man mumbled to himself, then catapulted over the cinderblock rooftop and started scaling the side of the building. Bullets fired from across the street but their angle was off, and the Soldier was able to run down the street towards the goat without hitting any oncoming fire.

Clint watched through his binoculars for anyone in the distance but after a moment curiosity got the better of him, and he scanned the binoculars towards the goat. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure what he expected to find, he was still wondering why the Soldier hadn’t taken the shot. But he definitely was surprised to see him sitting in a squat in front of the goat, petting its shoulder. He appeared to be talking to it. Then Clint watched him shift, and focus on the bomb.

The IED was disarmed within minutes. Either their enemy was that incompetent or the Soldier was that good. With a swift smack to the goat’s hip, he ran off in the opposite direction of the town.

He’d thought Hydra had frozen this former operative’s humanity up entirely. But he just saved a goat, so…What did Clint know?

With the bomb out of the picture, the enemy advanced and his attention turned to putting his arrows into brains and torsos. He’d worry about Bucky later.

~~~

The next time they were alone, Clint was hungover. He’d gone out the night before with Nat and had just sat through a too loud, noon breakfast with Tony and Steve. They were bickering over something incredibly unimportant, because they were always looking for something to fight over. Because of all the unresolved tension between them, sexual or otherwise. Clint hadn’t figured out which yet, but he couldn’t be bothered to care. His brain pounded against his eardrums, and luckily when he willed them away, they miraculously listened. They went out to the balcony and Clint was left in blissful silence, for eight glorious minutes.

Then the elevator chimed.

Clint braced himself for the onslaught of another human being against his senses. The person walked through the hallway, but their steps weren’t heavy or grating to his ears. He didn’t even hear them. And he wasn’t surprised when Bucky Barnes came into view.

Something strange happened then, the man looked at Clint as he passed and he smiled. It wasn’t huge, it didn’t even move his cheeks, but his lips flickered and it was just enough for Clint to know that Bucky was happy to see him.

He was blissfully quiet, walking by the kitchen island Clint at to the fridge, opening it and pulling out the fixings for a sandwich. It was the first time all day Clint had wanted to say something to someone, the first time all day he had focused on something other than how horrible he felt. But he didn’t know what to say, so instead they sat in a comfortable silence, Clint eating his cereal and Bucky his sandwich.

Bucky finished first, and Clint will never know how he placed his plate into the sink so silently. He was at the end of his frosted flakes, the milk sweet and he was considering if his stomach would feel better or worse if he drank it when Bucky’s shadow fell over his bowl. Clint eyed him, and he looked so still, like a statute, until his mouth flickered into that tiny smile again. “Feel better.”

By the time Clint managed a, “thanks”, Bucky was halfway to the elevator again.

Clint didn't see him again for another thirty-six hours. Though, to be fair, he spent a solid twelve of them in bed and another eight at SHIELD. Maybe it was because he wasn’t used to the man, yet. That was why, when the door to the range slid open, and he saw Bucky standing in weaver stance with a handgun, something twisted in his stomach and he had to stare at the weaponry across the range to prevent a visible reaction to Bucky’s presence.

Though, knowing the super-soldier, he probably heard his pulse race, or something. Because that was the kind of luck Clint had.

No one else was in the range with them, but he still kept two lanes between them. Clint was still close enough to see the man’s expression brighten when his target came back to him with a single hole in the center. He’d shot six times.

“Nice shooting,” Clint couldn’t help the words, because you didn’t see talent like that and not appreciate it. At least when it wasn’t focused on annihilating him, and for all the Winter Soldier was trained terror, he, well, he saved a goat so...

“Thanks,” Bucky replied. “You got your bow going over there?”

Clint lifted up his recurve bow and metal arrows. “Can’t quite make them all into one spot liek you, when they aren’t wood.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow, impressed, and it was the most expressive Clint had ever seen the man’s face. “You telling me you can when they _are_ wood?”

Clint snorted. “Of course I can, that’s the first trick in the book. I learned that back in the circus.” Curiosity was easy to read on Bucky’s face now too, like he’d chosen to let his expressions speak in a language Clint could understand, when before he seemed so emotionally monosyllabic.

Bucky also, apparently, hadn’t known he’d been in the circus based on his face, and Clint wanted to cut off any follow up questions because the circus was the last thing he wanted to talk about. “Trust me, whatever glitz and glamor you’re imagining, it was the exact opposite. It was much more a beat-you-till-you made-it scenario.” Clint tried to force an indifferent attitude towards his own seedy past, but a familiar winter storm fell over Bucky’s face and the Soldier was there once more. Only for a moment, before he shook his head and turned back to the target, jaw still clenched. Clint felt awkward, standing there staring at Bucky but he was too busy wondering about this new anger that was apparently on Clint’s behalf to look away.

The thought was unsettling, but not in a bad way. It was slightly flattering but left him feeling incredibly uncertain. Good thing Clint was good at thinking on his feet because he could use his words to shift the focus off of himself. “So, how’d you learn to calm farm animals?” He asked, apropos of nothing, as he notched an arrow into the bow. Smooth, Barton.

Except it worked, the clouds in Bucky’s eyes were gone by the time he turned back to Clint. There was a brightness in them when he told him about his great-uncle Ira. “He had this house up in the Catskills and when we were real young, back before he passed, he would take me and Stevie up there. It was near paradise.”

“Oh yeah?” It was strange to imagine Steve and Bucky living in a different time, and it always made him feel out of his depths. Which was probably why he never really thought about it. Smooth coping skills, Barton.

But he smiled now, and listened to Bucky, because he found that he actually wanted to know more about this man with his small smiles and snowstorms of anger, and everything in between. “That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, it was. There was a lake, and the cabin was right on the edge of it. All of them were, a little semi-circle of cabins. And there were these activities, on the beach or in the dining hall. Outside near the forest there was a petting zoo.”

Clint pulled back and let the arrow soar through the air and hit the target.

“Nice shot.”

“Childsplay,” Clint smirked, then pressed a button on the back wall of his lane that made the target move. “So this petting zoo. Goats? I’m guessing.”

Bucky chuckled, clearly amused by Clint’s fixation on the goat. “Yes, minus the explosives.”

“Well that’s reassuring, considering you were what? Eight?”

“About that age.”

“It’s strange to think that you were really that young once.” Bucky started to laugh before Clint even realized what his stupid mouth had said. “Sorry, is that rude? It probably is, but it’s true. To think of you as a kid? You’re considered a legend in the sniper community, you have to know that. In the assassin one too and--” Clint cut off his own rambling when Bucky’s face went blank and he turned toward his lane and shot his whole clip at his target. As soon as the bullets finished reverberating around the room, Clint continued talking because he wanted to get that furrow out of Bucky’s brow. “So, farm animals. What else? Did you Brooklyn boys milk cows? I thought only a farm boy like me experienced the pleasure.”

“Are you kidding me? I can’t compete with someone from _Iowa_ but for a New Yorker? Well there were a lot more local dairies in the forties, and in the Catskills there was this one cow.” Bucky started to tell Clint all about a cow named Daisy and Clint realized, that it’d worked: Bucky was laughing again. The sound caused a jolt of satisfaction to run through Clint because...he wanted to make Bucky happy. And that was when he realized he’d fallen for the man.

Clint missed his next shot and Bucky teased him relentlessly for it until they left the range, shoulders nudging one another out the door.

~~~

Twenty hours later in the frozen food aisle, Clint ran into Bucky again. He tripped in his step, and it pulled Bucky’s attention away from the ice cream and towards Clint. The grin that crossed Bucky’s face wasn’t small anymore, it was wide and bright and made Clint flush despite the freaking walls of ice on either side on him.

“Surprised to see you here,” Bucky said when Clint stopped next to him, both of them eyeing the desserts.

“It’s been years and I refuse to let someone else pick out my food, especially if that ‘someone else’, is an AI.”

“Good to know it’s not just me being antiquated.”

“Lot’s of things are that, but not this,” Clint assured him, opening the door to pull out his favorite Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, Hawkberries and Cream. A purple raspberry and white chocolate mix, with chunks of macadamia nuts.

“I saw those.” Bucky pointed to the array of Avengers flavored ice creams. “I was shocked Tony hadn’t stacked the fridge with Iron Man Cherry and Caramel.”

Clint snorted. “They’re banned because Tony hated his flavour. I stash this one in my apartment, deep in a drawer of the freezer, incase Tony ever ends up in my fridge.”

Bucky grabbed one of each Avenger and threw them into his cart, then he motioned for Clint to come closer with a curl of his finger. It all seemed very playful, and completely unlike the Bucky from a few weeks ago, back before the desert.

It was strange how hot it was then, when all he had for company was the blank-faced Winter Soldier. Now, here in the frozen food section, Bucky created a delightful warmth with his conspiratory smirk, and the way he bit at his lip before asking, “Do you think I can keep these in your apartment?”, leaning into Clint’s space.

Something on Clint’s face, or maybe the way he wasn’t saying anything, made Bucky’s brow furrow. “It’s just, Tony’s in mine and Steve’s quarters as much as his own, these days,” he explained, and just when he was about to turn away again Clint recovered.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, no question, don’t even have to ask.” Smooth, Barton.

But then Bucky’s cheeks reddened and he looked, well, relieved, more relieved than the situation really warranted. It was enough, though, for Clint to realize that maybe this growing warmth between them was as welcomed by Bucky as Clint. Maybe, he even wanted more too.

Clint wasn’t smooth, but he was brave. So there, in the middle of the frozen food aisle, he grabbed Bucky’s hand and made a move.

“Maybe we can eat ‘em all together after…. Dinner?”

Bucky’s gaze was fixed on their connected hands and by the time he pulled it away to look at Clint, he looked a bit shell-shocked. “You asking me out?”

“That depends. You saying yes?”

Bucky’s hand clenched around his own, pulled Clint a step closer so that it was obvious what Bucky was aiming to do and Clint’s eyes were closing before Bucky’s whispered, “Definitely,” even met his ears. And then Bucky’s hot, rough, lips met his and everything froze and lit on fire at the same time.

He couldn’t breath but he could feel the searing hand of Bucky’s palm against his back, the cold metal one grasping his bicep. Clint surged into the kiss, forgetting where they were until a person grabbing frozen pizza shut the door on the opposite end of the aisle. And then it was a heated rush of joy, that they were there, somewhere as mundane as the grocery store, for their first kiss. First of many, Clint hoped.

Clint broke the kiss, but kept their faces close. “Guess your farmboy charming skills work on Clints as well as goats.”

Bucky looked at him like he was crazy, but affection tinted the corners and softened the edges of his smile anyway.

Smooth, Barton.

**Author's Note:**

> For ferret, for finishing the plot before the fluff. <3
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr: [ashes0909](http://ashes0909.tumblr.com)!


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